In the fray, be aware and protect your biggest assets, which are integrity, transparency, authenticity, courage, cohesion, creativity, an acting on social values, ethical independence, a willingness to learn, and a lack of shame.

That's what a hospital consultant asked a colleague of mine (in for a minor operation) last week. And if a highly educated health specialist in a major London hospital's got such a false picture of HIV - still incurable, by the way - what hope do we have with the general public?

Legal in the US for some time now, the self-test kit has been a focus of some controversy in the UK, and has been illegal for many years. You are, though, allowed to sample your own blood at home, and then send it off to an accredited laboratory (privately, of course).

World Aids Day is a chance to do two things: take action and reflect. First and foremost it's got to be a spur to take action, as there are still far too many people who aren't educated about HIV and AIDS and who don't get tested.

Have you ever been at risk of HIV? Most people think they haven't, and quite a few of you are wrong. In fact, around 25,000 of you in the UK are so wrong that you're walking around with HIV without knowing it. If you're one of those 25,000 (and let's face it, that's much better odds than winning the Lottery, which many of us hope to do) then you are risking your own health and life, and you may well be unwittingly putting others at risk too.

We all like to believe that history is progress; that things get better, that we learn as we go on. Well, this World AIDS Day, we can see that it isn't always so. 25 years on from those huge tombstone ads saying "Don't Die Of Ignorance", some people are still dying in the UK because they don't get tested for HIV till it's too late. And people are still getting HIV through ignorance of their personal risk.